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nutritive particles rather than impure water.

We must leave the stomachs of camels to answer for the preference given by them to muddy water; for we are assured by Shaw, that these animals stir it up with their feet and render it turbid before they drink. The human economy requires, on the contrary, a pure beverage.

The signs of good water are, that it easily becomes hot and cold; that in summer it is cool, and in winter slightly lukewarm ; that a drop dried on a clean cloth leaves not the faintest stain behind; and that it has neither taste nor smell. It is also a sign of good water that when it is boiled it becomes hot, and afterwards grows cold, sooner than other water. But this sign is far more fallible than the evidence of the quality of water obtained by feeling. Singular as this may sound, it is very possible to distinguish the properties of water by means of this sense. A soft or a hard water is synonymous with a water the parts of which adhere slightly or closely together. The slighter their adhesion, the less they resist the feeling, and the less sensible they are to the hand, because they may be so much the more easily separated. A gentleman of my acquaintance has for many years used two different sorts of water, which are equally pure and limped, the one for drinking and the other for washing his hands and face. If his servant ever happens to bring the wrong water for washing, he instantly discovers the mistake by the feeling. Our cooks and washerwomen would be able to furnish many other instances of the faculty of discriminating the properties of water by the touch, which would show that this faculty depends more on the excitement occasioned in the sensible parts than on any other cause. Hard water, for instance, makes the skin rough; soft, on the contrary, renders it smooth. The former cannot sufficiently soften flesh or vegetables; the latter readily produces this effect. The difference of the extraneous matters which change the qualities of water, naturally makes a different impression on the feeling; and in this there is nothing that ought to astonish a person of reflection.

The water of standing pools and wells is in general extremely impure, and is accounted the worst of all. River water differs according to the variety of the soil over which it runs, and the changes of the weather; but though commonly drunk, it is never pure. Of all impure river-waters, those which abound in earthy particles alone are the least injurious, because those particles are not dissolved by the water. In Auvergne, near the villages of St. Allire and Clermont, there is a stream of a petrifying quality, which constructs of itself large bridges of stone, and yet it is the only water drunk by the inhabitants of those places, and that without the slightest inconvenience. If we consider that a stony concretion is deposited in all our kettles, we shall readily conceive, that a water which carries stone along with it cannot be very pernicious to health, since it is constantly drunk by men and animals. This stone in our kettles is really a calcareous earth, which may be dissolved by boiling in them vinegar, or water mixed with a small quantity of nitric acid; and as the water deposits it, and does not hold it in solution, it can of course do us very little injury. I cannot, therefore, imagine how the celebrated Dr. Mead could believe that water which leaves such a deposit in culinary vessels may occasion stone in

the kidneys or bladder, merely because Pliny has said so; though he was well acquainted with the great difference between animal calculi and mere calcareous earth.

Next to well and river-water, both which are always impure, rainwater follows in the scale of preference. It is very impure, and a real vehicle for all the pernicious matters that are continually floating in the atmosphere. Snow-water is much purer. Snow is formed of vapours which have been frozen before they could collect into drops. It is in the lower region of the air that these drops in falling absorb most of their impurities. The vapours floating in the upper atmosphere freeze before they reach the mire of the lower. This water is seldom to be had. That which I would most strongly recommend for drinking, is a spring-water, which descends from lofty hills, through flints and pure sand, and rolls gently along over a similar bed or rocks. Such water leaves behind all its coarse impurities in the sand; it is a purified rain and snow-water, a fluid crystal, a real cordial, and the best beverage for persons in good health.

The second condition which I attach to water-drinking is, that such persons only choose it for their constant beverage, to whom warming, strengthening and nutritive liquids are hurtful; and that if they have not been in the habit of drinking it from their youth, they use some caution in accustoming themselves to it. Many suffer themselves to be led away by the panegyrists of water, without considering that even good changes in the system of life, when a person is not accustomed to them, and when they are abruptly or unseasonably adopted, may be productive of great mischief. Hence arise the silly complaints that water-drinking is dangerous, pernicious, nay fatal, and the inapplicable cases quoted from experience. Those who have been in the habit of drinking water from their youth, cannot choose a more wholesome beverage, if the water be but pure. Many nations, and many thousand more species of animals, have lived well upon it. But for an old infirm person, a living skeleton, with a weak stomach that can scarcely bear solid food, to exchange nourishing beer or strengthening wine, with the water of his brook, would be the height of absurdity. Let such adhere to their accustomed drink. Water is an excellent beverage, but beer too is good; it is also water, more nutritious than the pure element, and therefore more suitable for the persons to whom I am alluding.

The third condition which I require of my water-drinkers is that they take cold and not hot water for their habitual beverage. I mean not to prohibit their boiling or distilling it if they suspect it to be impure. Boyle drank nothing but such distilled water, and most delicate people of good taste in Italy still do the same. It must not, however, be drunk warm, but cold. The ancients, it is true, drank hot water. Various passages in Plautus and other ancient writers clearly prove that so early as their times it was customary to drink the water of warm springs; and there are frequent instances of common water warmed. Thus, in Dio, we find Drussus, the son of Tiberius, commanding warm water to be given to the people, who asked for water to quench their thirst at a fire which had broken out. Seneca says (De Ira, ii, 15,) that a man ought not to fly into a passion with his ser

vant, if he should not bring his water for drinking so quickly as he could wish; or if it should not be hot enough, but only lukewarm; and Arrian says the same thing, but more circumstantially. The drinking of hot water must of course have been a common practice with the Greeks and Romans; but it should be observed, that even in their times it was held to be an effeminate indulgence of voluptuaries. Stratonicus calls the Rhodians "pampered voluptuaries who drink warm liquors." Claudius, when he attempted to improve the morals of the people and to check luxury at Rome, prohibited the public sale of hot water. When on the death of the sister of the Emperor Caius, he had enjoined mourning in the city of Rome on account of this, to him, exceedingly painful loss, he put to death a man who had sold hot water, for this very reason, because he had thereby given occasion for voluptuousness, and profaned the mourning. So dangerous an indulgence was the drinking of hot water considered, that the trade of water-sellers was interdicted by the Censors. Some writers publicly satirized this species of voluptuousness. Ammianus complains that in his time servants were not punished for great vices and misdemeanours, but that three hundred stripes were given them, if they brought the warm beverage either not promptly enough or not hot enough: and from that passage of Martial's in which he says, that at entertainments the host was accustomed to pay particular attention that during the feast there should be an abundant supply of hot water, it appears that this beverage was an essential requisite at the tables of the luxurious.

STANZAS.

In glowing youth, he stood beside
His native stream, and saw it glide
Shewing each gem beneath its tide,

Calm as though nought could break its rest,
Reflecting heaven in its breast,
And seeming, in its flow, to be
Like candour, peace, and piety.

When life began its brilliant dream,
His heart was like his native stream:

The wave-shrined gems could scarcely seem

Less hidden than each wish it knew;

Its life flow'd on as calmly too;
And Heaven shielded it from sin,
To see itself reflected in.

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LEGACY HUNTING.

“Quand li œil pleure, li cuer rit."-La Bible Guyot.

“I HAVE no doubt, Sir, but your will will be my pleasure," said a graceless nephew to a good-natured old uncle, who announced the intention of leaving him a fat legacy; and let sentimentalists say what they please of tender pains," "soft sorrows," "the pleasures of melancholy," and the "joy of grief;" there are no tears half so satisfactory as those of a legatee. In this sense, at least, most people will feel shocked at Sterne's jocular commencement of a sermon," that I deny,”—and will, in Yorick's despite, freely and at once acknowledge with the preacher of antiquity, that "it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting."

The merriest faces, it has been said, are to be seen in mourningcoaches; and though a ride in a mourning-coach (as my own woful experience has too frequently testified), does not necessarily imply a legacy, the circumstance can hardly fail to put the idea into a man's head; the memento mori reminding him of his legitimate expectations in some other quarter, and forcibly impressing on him the conviction, that, notwithstanding the man may still live who stands between himself and an estate, yet "in him nature's copy 's not etern,"—of which truth the mourner's corollary, like Macbeth's, (" then be thou jocund") follows, "as ready as a borrower's cap." This hypothesis for explaining the paradoxical combination of "inky suits" and "broad grins," will prove sufficient, I imagine, for the latitude of England in Ireland, as we all know, "it's the whiskey does it ;" and what necessity can there be for looking farther into the causes of that country's excessive population, since it is well known, that one man is never interred beneath the shamrock, without giving occasion to the production of at least two-uno avulso non deficiunt plures?

As a zealous disciple of the doctrine of final causes, which has a why for every wherefore, I firmly maintain that legacies exist in rerum natura for no other purpose than to dry our tears, to reconcile us to the loss of friends, and prevent that sinful despair which might otherwise unfit us for the business of life; and this will explain the cause of lachrymatories falling into disuse, and giving way to bottles of sal volatile, the pungency of which may supply the place of our gold-stifled sensibilities. Franklin does not mention of the lady, who, he said, "had not forgiven God Almighty the death of her husband," that she was handsomely provided for by will, or that she succeeded to a large jointure; but if this was the case, she must have been of a singularly unforgiving temper, a living monument of morosity and rancune, and an impugner of the decrees of Providence, beyond the ordinary temerity of human discontent and perverseness. In the silence of authority, I should rather imagine, that, like many other widows, she had been sacrificed to the heir, and that, with the man, the lady also missed his comfortable establishment. Although when death takes place in families, some natural tears" are shed by the most obdurate heirs-atlaw, and some tender regrets are indulged by men of the worst dispositions for those with whom they have long associated, yet, when the first quarter's rents are coming in, it may be doubted whether the most VOL. VI. No. 36.-1823.

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pious and affectionate of us all would not hesitate to accept the resurrection of our lost friend, if that resurrection implied a resumption of his testamentary donations. The closing of the grave, like that of the sea over a sinking ship, leaves no trace behind it. As each man drops from among the living, the ranks close over him, his place is supplied, and if a Prince Hohenloe should contrive to bring him back to life at the end of a week, it is but too probable that he would find "no standing-room" upon the whole face of the earth. I am not of Hamlet's philosophy, who thinks building churches the way to make “a great man's memory outlive his life half-a-year." No, no; let him who would really be regretted, take his money with him to the next world; and who knows what the force of association may then do for him? Such is human nature-" "Tis true 'tis pity, pity 'tis 'tis true;" but we must even accept of it upon its own terms.

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This being the lamentable truth, need we be surprised to find legacyhunting the vice of all nations, or to see among the landed aristocracy, father and son considering each other as natural enemies? The savage, no less than the civilized man, is desirous of living at the expense of his neighbour, and with a characteristic impetuosity he knocks his friends on the head without scruple, in order to obtain the reversion of their good properties,-a practice wisely enough forbidden in Christian communities, lest estates should exist perpetually in transitu, and possession, instead of being nine points of the law, should become nine posts towards the next world. For if the savage goes to such extremities to procure the sense, spirit, and physical force he envies in his neighbour, what would not the auri sacra fames effect in the civilized animal! The song says

"L'uom senza denaro è un morto che cammina,"

"the man without money is a mere walking corpse ;"--but if the savage notion prevailed among Europeans, the reverse would be the truth; and every man of wealth might be considered, if not dead in law, at least, in the language of the common people, all as one. Proletarians would have it all to themselves, a landholder would have scarcely time to bespeak his own coffin, the world would no longer be "a stage to feed contention in the lingering act," but "heir" would indeed

“Urge heir like wave impelling wave.””

"inexorable death" would "level all" with a vengeance; and however it might fare with the "trees and stones," no proprietor's life would be worth three days' purchase.

The Romans, who are celebrated among nations as the first in recorded story who reduced legacy-hunting to a system, did not hesitate, under the Tiberiuses and Neros, to denounce their dearest friends and relations, for the purpose of hastening the succession-an example sometimes imitated during the calamitous period of the French revolution. Of this practice, however, there is the less reason for vaunting, inasmuch as it partakes largely of the savage knock-me-down method above mentioned, and can in civilized life rank only with George Barnwell's commentary upon testamentary law—

* Pope.

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